Electric Image Animation System 7 Tutorials
Deformation Basics / Animating a Deformation Region
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Subtitles of the Movie (Electric Image Animation System 7 / Deformation Basics / Animating a Deformation Region)
Let's talk about the Region Controls over here on the left. You can change and therefore animate the area or region of the deformation. These Position and Rotation Values are in Object Space, not World Space so distance or angles are measured from the center of the model, which is 000. If I set the Y Value to minus 150, then the deformation region slides down. Now I'll move forward in time in the Project Window, then back to the Deformation Editor and change the Y Position to be 200. Let's preview. And the bulge travels up through the model. Let's go to the middle of the animation. You can also rotate the region. Let's say 20 degrees on the Z and preview. Let's set the Z Rotation back to zero. Let's switch to a Bend Deformer and bend it a bit. The Min and Max Fields on the bottom define the actual size of the region. It defaults to the model's extents or largest demands. This cube is 80 units wide and 80 units deep and 200 units tall as we can see here in its Uber Shape Controls. So the Min Max Values reflect those dimensions counting from zero at the center. I'll set the Y Position back to zero and in the Min Max Fields I'll shorten the height of the region by changing the Y Values to minus 50 and plus 50. Now the deformation only affects half of the model. And I get a tighter bend effect. Important note here: while I'm in the Deformation Editor, the Translate, Rotate and Scale Tools affect the deformation region, not the model itself. So I can move the controller like this and the deformation region moves, not the model. If I click off the region, then the tool acts normally and the entire model moves. Let's move the region back. You can clip the deformer's influence by clicking on the check boxes for the Min Max Fields, like these for the Y. Now the deformer only affects the area of the model that is actually contained by that deformation region and leaves the other polygons alone. I'll turn off the cube and let's look at another model in this scene. This plane has a Run Wave Deformer applied to it. As I drag in the deformation region, you can see that it makes a kind of ocean waves effect or mountains. Now, I can animate the position of the deformation region again like this and preview but it doesn't look much like the waves are really animating; just frozen and sliding. So instead of the regions position, let me get rid of these keyframes. I'm going to animate the values in the Run Waves Options. Leave the initial values alone for the first frame, move forward in time and change the Wave Offset to 400. And preview. Now I get the nice undulating distortion I was looking for. I'll turn off this Run Wave Plane and turn on our last model in this project; another cube like the first but this one has a Child Object. Let's see what it is. A particle system; and in the Particle Link Editor it is set to inherit deformations. Let's turn the Shade View to Wireframe, turn on the particles and in the Deformation Editor we have the Bezier Deformer applied. Select that, mov a handle and both the cube and the particles are deforming. Now, if I turn off the cube, the particles are still deformed and let's render a snapshot and we have successfully twisted our particles around. The point here is that you can deform particles but they should be child of a fixed-volume model like this cube. Otherwise the deformation region would not fit the ever-increasing volume of the particles.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Electric Image Animation System 7 |
| Author: | Scott Simmons |
| SKU: | 33996 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-45-9 |
| Release Date: | 2009-06-01 |
| Duration: | 8 hrs / 102 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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